Battle of the Sun (13 page)

THE ANCESTOR

J
ack turned the cart, and travelling slowly, without speaking, they came to the house on the Strand called The Level, where Jack’s mother had been housekeeper, and where Jack had worked as a stable boy.

‘What ho?’ said the groom, as Jack and Silver and Crispis clattered into the courtyard, with Sir Boris riding behind. ‘What have you brought here, boy?’

‘I shall answer no one but the Master of the House,’ said Jack, with such authority that the groom summoned the keeper of the yard, and the keeper summoned the livery page, and the page the steward, and after a deal of to-ing and fro-ing, the Master of the House came down the stairs himself, took one look at the Knight and the cart, and the stone boys and Jack’s stone mother, and announced that a conversation would take place over beef and pudding, for he had been out and not yet dined.

And Silver said nothing – nothing at all, because as soon as she set eyes on him, she knew just whose house it was, and she began to have a better idea of how she had come here, and why.

The three of them were eating beef and pudding. Silver was starving hungry, and too busy eating to talk, but she was very keen to listen.

She was looking under her cap at Sir Roger Rover, a fine man with green eyes and a trim red beard. His nose was exactly like Silver’s.

‘And you say,’ said Sir Roger Rover to Jack, ‘that this fellow the Magus, previously living in Dark House Lane, wants to turn all of the city of London into gold?’

‘He is an alchemist,’ said Jack. ‘It is his life’s work to change one substance into another, and already he can change flesh to stone.’

‘I am sorry about your mother,’ said Roger Rover. ‘She was a very good housekeeper –’ then he saw Jack’s sad face, ‘and, er, a very fine mother, I am sure.’

Jack’s mother stood like a statue in the corner of the room. The stone boys had been lined up in the hall. Crispis had gone to be washed, to see if the yellow would come off. Sir Boris was seeing to his horse in the best stable. That was his wish. He did not eat.

‘And when will this marvel take place? This marvel of all the dross of the town into solid gold?’ asked Sir Roger, who was thinking that a certain amount of gold could do no harm.

‘The work began two days ago – I think it was two days ago,’ said Jack, ‘at the time of the new moon, so there are perhaps twelve days left to the full moon, which I think will eclipse the sun.’

‘Indeed, indeed,’ said Sir Roger. ‘There is such an eclipse, John Dee himself has told me so – he is the Queen’s own alchemist and mathematician.’

‘I know him,’ said Jack, ‘for he was my mother’s master before she came to you.’

‘Indeed, indeed!’ said Roger Rover, stroking his beard. ‘I had forgotten that. But Jack, the moon is not far from full now – tomorrow, I do believe.’

Jack rubbed his head. ‘Then I have been caught in some magic of time at the Dark House – the new moon came, I lent the Magus my power . . . I went to sleep . . .’

And Silver remembered how she had been reading the Book of the Phoenix and had had the strange sensation that time was passing oddly . . .

‘He has done it so that he can win!’ shouted Jack, getting up from the table. ‘We must find him!’

Roger Rover took the boy firmly by the shoulders and settled him back on the bench.

‘This frenzy is not the way, Jack. This very night John Dee’s own assistant comes to see me on another matter. I shall discuss the whole business with him, and we shall speak of it in the morning. I would not believe a word of it if it were not for the statue of your poor mother, yet . . .’

And Sir Roger Rover went to look at her, sighing and shaking his head.

‘Take your mother’s rooms as your own, and stay there with this companion of yours – a familiar face, I think?’

And Silver did seem like a familiar face to Sir Roger, but she knew why, and he did not. She smiled and bowed, and said nothing. Sir Roger stood staring at her as she left the room with Jack.

Jack and Silver went upstairs to Jack’s mother’s tiny sitting room with its small bed in an alcove in the wall. Jack was gloomy that they had lost so much time.

‘Jack,’ said Silver, ‘it may be that he put us both into a swoon of time in the Dark House – it was his house and under his magic, but we are not under his magic now, and we can change what lies ahead.’

‘No one can change what lies ahead,’ said Jack, his heart heavy.

‘That is not true, Jack,’ said Silver. ‘Nothing is solid, nothing is fixed,’ and she said this with such certainty that Jack felt calm again. He smiled.

‘I am used to sleeping in the hayloft above the stables,’ said Jack. ‘I shall sleep on the floor here, and you shall have this bed, Mistress Silver.’

‘Call me Silver,’ said Silver, ‘and remember I am a boy.’

‘Yes,’ said Jack. ‘I shall try.’

‘Jack,’ said Silver, ‘Sir Roger Rover, your master, he’s a pirate, isn’t he? And a spy?’

Jack looked angry, and now that he had a power about him, he was frightening when he looked angry.

‘My master is a sea-faring gentleman close to the Queen herself!’ said Jack hotly. ‘He has amassed a great fortune through treasure trove, and been granted lands and titles by the Queen. He possesses this fine house in London, one of the very finest, and he has a great estate in Cheshire, with a splendid new-built house.’

‘I know that,’ said Silver, ‘I live there. It’s called Tanglewreck.’

Jack looked at her in surprise. ‘It is certainly called Tanglewreck,’ he said. ‘But how can you live there?’

‘It’s been in our family since Roger Rover built it,’ answered Silver. ‘The house is falling apart a bit, well, quite a lot now, and we haven’t got any of the farms and lands with it at all, they were all sold years and years ago, but the house is still there, and it’s mine – well, my parents’, but I don’t think they’re coming back. It’s a long story, Jack, but it must be why I am here. It’s all tangled together – like the Tanglewreck house. Roger Rover is my ancestor, but I don’t think we should tell him. He won’t believe me.’

‘I don’t believe you,’ said Jack.

‘You’ve got a cheek,’ said Silver. ‘Dragons, Eyebats, alchemists, stone boys, bright yellow children, mad old women who live under trees, a knight called Sir Boris, a sunflower that rescued you, creatures cut in half – and me, arriving through the fireplace – and you think it’s too hard to believe that Roger Rover is my ancestor and that I live in his house more than four hundred years later? That’s the easy bit!’

Jack was silent.

‘Right then,’ said Silver, ‘and I’ll tell you something else.

It’s your task to stop the Magus turning everything into gold, but I’m here to help you, because you called me. But now that I know about Roger Rover, I think I might be here for some other reason too.’

‘What could that be?’ asked Jack.

‘It’s to do with an adventure I had before you met me. You call me the Golden Maiden, and yes, Jack, I am her, though in other places I’m known as the Girl with the Golden Face.’

‘What other places?’ said Jack.

‘I’ll tell you the whole story as we go along,’ said Silver, ‘but, Jack, Roger Rover says he has a visitor tonight – and I’d like to see who it is . . . is there a way that we can watch out?’

THE VISITOR

A
t seven o’clock precisely, the Visitor entered the inner chamber of Sir Roger Rover.

AThe Visitor was never late, unless he meant to be, and never early, unless he intended it. He used time as though he owned it, which, one day, he hoped to do.

But that day was not today and that night was not tonight. Tonight he was coming to buy a clock, or the pieces of one.

Jack and Silver were squashed together behind a secret panel that Jack’s mother had shown him. The panel opened into the inner chamber, with holes in that looked like air vents, but were really spy holes to see through.

The two of them had a very good view of the room; its fireplace, its carved wooden table and chair, its cabinet, its bookcase. Roger Rover was in the room already, looking out of the window and on to the river. There was a brief knock at the door, and the Visitor entered.

‘Sir Roger!’ said a voice, and Silver nearly shouted out, because she knew the voice, and she knew the figure of the man, though he was young here, and not nearly as fat as . . .

the . . . man . . .

‘Abel Darkwater,’ announced Roger Rover, pouring wine from a silver jug.

. . . she . . . had . . . met . . . so fatefully . . . at . . . Tanglewreck . . . two years ago (or four hundred and twelve years later, depending on how you thought about time); the man who had imprisoned her first in his house, and finally in a giant glass alembic like the ones Jack had worked in the Dark House.

Abel Darkwater was a small man with short legs but a powerfully built upper body. His chest was wide and that made his arms seem too short. His hands were thick and heavy, with dark hair on the backs and finger joints, and his eyes, protruding a little, were very round, like two orbs. He had a quiet voice, but there was an edge of threat to it, so that even when he was saying good morning it sounded as though it might not be a good morning for you if he had anything to do with it.

The last time Silver had seen him he had been fatter and balder and older, though his voice was just the same. Now, he still had a coating of dark hair on his head, worn close like a skull cap, and coarse and bristly. And he had long whiskers.
A boar!
thought Silver.
He looks like a man who is really a boar.

Abel Darkwater took the wine and drank it down.

‘My master John Dee has asked me to bring you this gold in return for a clock,’ said Abel Darkwater, plonking down a very large velvet bag on the table.

‘I do not need gold,’ said Roger Rover, ‘and I hear, from the gossip in the streets, that the whole city will very soon be made of gold. Tell me straightforwardly, Darkwater, do you have any information about a man who calls himself the

Magus? An alchemist? Recently to be found in Dark House Lane?’

‘There was such a man,’ replied Abel Darkwater, ‘and we knew of him, oh, yes, but this night he takes a boat across the Channel to France.’

‘Not turning London into solid gold, then?’ asked Sir Roger, refilling the goblets with dark red wine.

‘A fantasy, an idle dream,’ said Abel Darkwater. ‘Only the true alchemist can turn lead into gold. The Magus, as he calls himself, is a fool and an impostor – he has been found out, and that is why he is fleeing these shores. My master John Dee has nothing to do with him.’

‘I am glad to hear it,’ said Roger Rover, ‘but tell me, why does your master John Dee want the pieces of this clock? It is broken, and has no value but for its jewels, which are beautiful but not exceptional.’

‘May I see it?’ asked Abel Darkwater, his breath a little short.

Roger Rover unlocked his cabinet, and drew out a battered leather bag, sea-stained and cracked. Then he spread his handkerchief on his desk and emptied on to it the contents of the bag.

What a mess! Springs, cogs, enamelled pictures, rubies, pearls, bits of gold . . .

Silver thought she would have a heart attack. There it was, the Timekeeper. The clock that could control time. The clock that even now, no, not now, four hundred years later, where she lived, was ticking at Tanglewreck. She had a sudden fearful thought: was it really Jack who had called her to help him, or had some sinister power set out to trap her?

Abel Darkwater ran his hands over the pieces. ‘It is a clock,’ he murmured, ‘unlike any other clock. It has a mysterious power, useless to you, but of great interest to my master. Let me buy it. Let me take it.’

Roger Rover suddenly swept up the pieces and put them back into the leather bag. ‘It is not for sale,’ he said firmly.

‘It is better,’ said Abel Darkwater quietly, but with that threat in his voice, ‘that you be a friend to us, Roger Rover, and not an enemy. My master is a powerful man, alchemist to the Queen herself, oh, yes, a powerful man, and not a man, I should hazard, that you wish to offend.’

‘I offend no man,’ said Roger Rover mildly, ‘yet perhaps your master should visit me himself, if this clock means such a great deal to him. I do not say he cannot have it – I say it is not for sale. There may be another price that suits us both – but you are the servant, and I must deal with the master. Send John Dee to me, or bid that I shall come to him.’

Silver could see how angry was Abel Darkwater, so angry that he levitated slightly above the floor. How well she remembered him doing that! Roger Rover appeared not to notice. Bowing his head slightly and curtly, Abel Darkwater left the room.

‘We have to follow him!’ whispered Silver to Jack. Jack wanted to ask why, but the look on Silver’s face was so serious and urgent that, without speaking, Jack led Silver through a maze of dusty passages and out on to the river, just as Abel

Darkwater was getting into his rowboat.

‘Run upriver with me,’ said Jack, ‘if you want to keep him in sight!’

‘I’ll explain it all!’ said Silver. ‘I promise!’

Abel Darkwater rowed on until he came to an inn at the waterside. It was a strange inn, thought Silver, called Le Swan on Le Hope, and its sign was a golden swan holding a maiden in its beak.

‘Pull your cap down,’ said Jack. ‘There will be danger.’

Jack and Silver slunk inside the inn. It was a low-roofed, timber-framed place with sawdust all over the floor, and heavy oak barrels that served as places to sit or places to eat. There were squat benches too, crammed five men to a bench, and children playing a dice game by the window.

Jack bought himself and Silver some pudding and small beer, a kind of watery beer that children drank, and that Silver had read about but never tasted; it was horrible.

Abel Darkwater had ordered Spanish wine and he sat at a table in the window.

‘Jack,’ said Silver, ‘I know you called me to help you, but I’m scared, because that man Abel Darkwater is very powerful, and he lives on, through time. He’s still alive in my world, four hundred and more years away, and all he wants is to control time – and to do that he needs that clock that you saw, the Timekeeper, and he needs me. Well, no, he doesn’t need me, he needs me not to exist.’

‘Dead?’ said Jack.

‘More or less,’ said Silver. ‘If I get lost and locked in time here, then in the future, I won’t be able to defeat him. But –’ ‘No,’ said Jack, ‘and I brought you here. I called you.’

‘I know,’ said Silver, ‘but . . .’

But at that moment, who should come through the door to join Abel Darkwater, but the Magus himself?

By now the tavern was full of evening drinkers, and working men taking their supper of pigs’ trotters and eels and cabbage soup and thick black bread, and suet pudding stuffed with sheep’s brains.

‘Did you just say sheeps’ brains?’ said Silver, who had been eating her pudding quite happily until then.

‘Silver, I cannot go nearer to the Magus, he will know me,’ said Jack, ‘but your disguise is good. Can you not tag on to those apprentice boys and get by his table, and see what you can find?’

Silver didn’t like the thought of going nearer to either the Magus or Abel Darkwater, but it was true that she no longer looked like herself, whereas Jack looked just like himself.

She pulled her cap lower and slipped off her stool.

The apprentice boys piling into the tavern were rowdy and lively, and hardly noticed Silver crewing along with them as they shoved themselves and their brimming pots of ale into the space by the fire. Silver stood with her back so close to Abel Darkwater that she could feel the warmth of him through his cloak.

The Magus was talking.

‘The Opus has begun. It will be completed at the eclipse and the rise of the tides. If you will assist me I shall make you a wealthy man, Darkwater. You shall leave John Dee and be your own master.’

‘I am my own master,’ replied Darkwater, ‘for I owe nothing to John Dee. I have left his service, and have a work of my own to accomplish. You seek gold, but I seek the gold that cannot be counted.’

‘I will not interfere with your own work,’ said the Magus. ‘That is yours. Yet I need an assistant. What is your price?’

‘Riches,’ said Abel Darkwater, ‘enough that I may flee to France and live without thought of money. There is a clock I must obtain, and when I have obtained it, I must repair it. A great deal of money will be necessary.’

‘The Timekeeper?’ laughed the Magus. ‘You are a fool, Darkwater, if you believe that timepiece has any power. It is a toy, the story is a rumour. There is nothing there.’

‘Then let my folly be my own,’ replied Darkwater evenly. ‘And my price is something more than gold . . .’

The Magus looked at him steadily.

‘I want the Captive.’

‘She is disappeared,’ said the Magus.

‘But she is with the boy, of that I am sure. He called her.’

‘How do you know that?’ said the Magus sharply.

‘She is the Golden Maiden,’ said Abel Darkwater.

‘That cannot be!’ said the Magus.

‘Perhaps you do not know all that you think you know.

Perhaps you do not control all that you think you control,’ said Abel Darkwater quietly.

The Magus was silent. He was so angry that a part of the table began to smoulder. Abel Darkwater put his hand over the smoking smouldering wood, and the smoke rose up between his thick fingers. He was smiling. It was unpleasant.

‘The boy is your rival, do not underestimate him. Be aware too that the Maiden has power of her own.’

‘I shall destroy the boy,’ said the Magus. ‘As to this Maiden . . .’

‘If you want my help, do not bargain with me. When you take the boy, give me the girl. The money is the money, but the girl is the price. No more and no less.’

The Magus nodded. ‘You shall have the money, and you shall have the Maiden.’

‘I shall join you in the morning, before dawn,’ said Abel Darkwater. ‘I have things to do until then. Where shall I find you?’

‘At the old Priory,’ said the Magus, and Abel Darkwater laughed his short unpleasant laugh.

‘And the Abbess? Will she be there too?’

‘She has some interest in the Work,’ said the Magus. ‘The old Priory, then . . .’

The Magus rose. Silver took the opportunity to slip away under cover of an oaf the size of an elephant. This oaf, carrying six empty flagons of ale to be replenished, was so fat and vast that neither the Magus nor Abel Darkwater noticed Silver at all. In a flash she was back to where she had left Jack, sitting on a barrel. But Jack had gone outside, and was crouching behind a mooring stone, listening to Wedge and Mistress Split, waiting at oars in the sullen golden boat.

‘Thing won’t hatch!’ said Wedge. ‘If I could hatch it, I could take all his power, all his money, all his golden city, but the thing won’t hatch. Had every hen in London sit on it, but hatch it will not.’

‘I don’t care one tittle!’ snarled Mistress Split. ‘What wouldn’t I give of gold and jewels to see my beautiful Boojie again. Mine mine mine! Gone gone gone!’

‘Shut up!’ shouted Wedge. ‘I hated that dog, all four legs and fur and two eyes and whole. We doesn’t do wholes, we does halves, as well you know!’

‘Mine mine mine,’ moaned Mistress Split, ‘and the Magus forcing us to work all day and all night, and all hollow it is to me now, even when this city is paved with gold and we gets a golden house with a golden front door.’

‘There will be no golden house or golden front door,’ said Wedge. ‘He’ll shove us back in a bottle and drown us. If you won’t help me with the hatching of the Egg, and join me in halves by rights, then I’ll save myself and let you drown.’

‘Give me the Egg!’ cried Mistress Split. ‘I’ll take it to Mother Midnight – she won’t speak to you, as she speaks only to women and children and never to men.’

‘She’s a stupid old woman,’ said Wedge.

‘She has power,’ said Mistress Split, ‘and well may she have the hen that can hatch the Egg.’

And privately Mistress Split was thinking that if she could only get away from Wedge for an hour, she could find her beloved Boojie dog.

Jack heard – and thought that if he needed to find the Magus, all he had to do was follow Mistress Split when she left Mother Midnight.

Then he shrank back, for the Magus himself was coming towards the boat.